Saturday, July 21, 2007

Blech...Bleah...Whatever...

The skies match my mood today: overcast, gray, raining on everyone's parade (here in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park, anyway). All I'm lacking is the thunder, and the most I can muster in that particular category would better be described as "grumbling." I almost wrote “whining,” but I never whine.Ever.

This, Gentle Reader, is the result of staying up way too late, sleeping in way too late, and…to top off a perfectly ugly sort of morning: a mild headache. The headache piece may or may not be the result of not being fully-caffeinated as of yet. Whatever. I see Tylenol in my future. My immediate future.

Today's Pic: Taken about seven minutes ago, just before a brief (yet violent) cloudburst that produced enough rain to make the Green Hornet look like the Green Leopard, but not enough to do the lawn vegetation any good.Forecast:thunderstorms all day, 85 degree high.Mississippi-like WX, in other words (I’m speaking of the heat/humidity combo only).

I might be back later.Right now it’s a toss-up:back to bed or another cup?I’ll let ya know.Eventually.

8 comments:

Heh, that WX sounds a lot like Alabama this time of year. I still remember one day we were at black flag conditions by 1100. And of course, we're out in the thick of it marching around in BDUs...long sleeved BDUs.

The worst thing is that I washed my BDUs all of two times while at FT. We wore them pretty much every day down there. There was one kid that Col. Tubbs, the FTU/CC, overheard say that he hadn't washed his BDUs the entire encampment. This happened on TD-25, which is 3 days before the end of the encampment.

Needless to say, the next day a mandatory wash your BDUs order came down from Col. Tubbs.

Haha, well, for starters Col. Tubbs is probably still down at Maxwell finishing up some paperwork, but he's actually the Det. CC at VMI.

To answer your question, FT stands for Field Training. It's 28 days of fun in the sun at summer camp at either lovely Maxwell AFB or Ellsworth AFB. It's basically boot camp for officers. You go down there and get put in an artificially stressful environment and are expected to perform and demonstrate leadership potential and capability.

In short, think boot camp but instead of just doing what you're told to do you also have to demonstrate some initiative and leadership. If you're interested in more details head on over to my place because I'm planning on telling quite a few stories over the next few weeks.

I guess I should add a bit on...FT is Air Force ROTC's version of this...the Navy and Army versions are considerably different. I'm in AFROTC so I got to go to FT; after FT I have two more years as a POC (for lack of a better word, an "upperclassman") at my detachment and then I will graduate and commission on to active duty.

They moved FT to Maxwell and Ellsworth?? Wow. Maxwell seems to make sense, but Ellsworth? My FT was at Lackland, which I believe is the best place for it. Gateway to the AF...for EVERYBODY!

Anyway, fond memories of FT still reside in my cranium. My favorites usually centering around the young CTAs yelling and screaming at all the cadets, some of which were like me, prior enlisted with over 10 years in the ADAF. My favorite phrase was: "I don't think you're gonna make it in my AF!"

Got news for you buddy...I've been in "your AF" for over 10 years...said, of course, only in my head...gotta play the game sometimes!

Yeah, there's a whole story behind the different FT locations...way back in the dark ages (like 6+ years ago) there were four FT locations: Maxwell, Ellsworth, Tyndall, and then the extended 6 week encampment at Lackland. Right around 6 years ago they closed the extended at Lackland and moved it to one of the Maxwell FTUs. Last summer was the last summer for the Tyndall FTU (which was a good thing, because it was completely ghetto from what I've heard). Next summer is going to be the last one for the Ellsworth FTU. Gen Flowers, the AFOATS/CC, has a vision of Maxwell being the officer equivalent of Lackland. When the Ellsworth FTU closes all Air Force officers (with the exception of the ring knockers) will have to pass through Maxwell as part of their training before they commission. It's part of this larger Air University initiative to try and bring the different officer training programs closer together. Other stuff that is part of the initiative is the "prop and wings challenge" (look for more on that at my place) and a 5k flightline warrior run that we did during the encampment with BOT and COT. It was actually pretty cool because between ROTC, BOT, and COT there was probably over a thousand people out running.

Haha, I've got pages and pages worth of good lines from the CTAs at our encampment...whenever a CTA would yell at a prior enlisted it was tough for us to keep a straight face because we're all thinking, "that CTA is one year older than us; we're 20, the CTA is 21...this prior enlisted cadet is 31 frickin years old!" I'm sure you're familiar with the speed of excellence...I've got a good story posted up at my place about what a CTA said one night to us in the latrine about the speed of excellence.

As for what I want to do, my first choice would be intel, by far. If intel doesn't come down, I wouldn't mind SF (yeah, I'm something of a masochist I guess.) Acquisitions would also be kind of interesting and so would Maintenance. I haven't figured out the last thing to put on my job drop sheet. But the only two I'm really interested in would be intel and SF, and the split on that one is about 99% intel and 1% SF.